The Bitching Hour

It's no secret. I hate New York City. I've been here too damn long, and I've grown to loathe the place. And it seems to give me a new reason to hate it every day. And yes, I would move ---but for the forseeable future, barring some miracle, I'm trapped. So to everyone who says, "If you hate it so much, why don't you just leave?" I say, "Go fuck yourself with a hot poker, then jump off a building and die alongside your tired cliches."

Reason of the week: The F train. What's the point of the F train? Lately they've been suspending service and deciding to skip stops willy-nilly. Why have the train at all?!? I've walked 20 blocks at least 3 times in the past week. So in case you were wondering, Brooklyn is every bit as infuriating as Manhattan, just for different reasons. (Naturligtvis, this got me wondering what the subways were like i Sverige. So I asked people for their opinions and pictures, figuring that I'd hear the usual refrain: "The trains are horrible; they're never on time......" I heard the opposite from EVERY PERSON: "The trains are extremely efficient, always on time, clean...." and the pictures of the stations were DAZZLING. You have no idea. And looking at them, I can be nearly 100000000000000% sure that they don't stink of urine and godknowswhatelse the NYC ones stink of. But that's for another entry.)

Reason of the day: I thought, "Well, the world is going down in flames, so I might as well indulge that long-held fantasy and become ...blond. Or at least a lighter brunet." So I went to a salon. A SALON. And I pointed to the shade I wanted, which was actually DARKER than the maximum lightness I could achieve with a single process (because a double process was ludicrously priced, considering my hair length). I pointed to an ASH shade. ASH means the hair has a color like ASH. ASH is what's left over when you burn something. It's GREY. It's not colorful. So ASH in hair terms means a very subdued hair color. Basically the POLAR OPPOSITE of gold. I pointed to ash and had confidence that the person knew what she was doing, since she's a fucking hairstylist and her own hair was colored. Moreover, she was Japanese, so I figured she had experience with high-lift bleaching. And I told her, "I have a lot of red in my hair, so I want an ash shade." But I was confident it would come out nice; and all the books say that if you want to lift 3 shades or more, you should go to a professional, which is what I thought I did. So it gets all finished, and voila! My hair is a reddish golden brown*. WHAT! THE! FUCK! In fact, it was only a litte MORE gold than when I used a fucking bottle of L'Oreal True Brunettes, at $9 for the box. So I got BETTER results at home than from a salon?!?!?!?? I'd expect to come out with Puerto Rican orange in Tallahassee, but not in New York. Now I have to either apply shitloads of blue-green temporary color in the hopes of creating grey or verdigris or doo-doo brown; dye it darker; shave it off; or bleach it again (paying even MORE money for a salon is out of the question). All because I had confidence in a frickin' salon.

The first thing to take from this story: Don't go to Hisako Salon on 7th avenue. The second thing: Don't ever bother with a salon. Have a friend bleach your hair and figure out how to tone it on your own. You'll get better results for cheaper. I've had my hair dyed professionally twice now, and both times were total disasters. The first was when I had it done plum in college. Well, the person never got the black off the ends, so I went back twice to have them correct it and ended up with a pile of fried straw on my head. The second was today.

So thanks, New York, for giving me enough reasons for 40 lifetimes to despise you. I always thought jokingly that the best thing about living in New York would be leaving it, but now I think it's actually the truest sentiment I've ever had.

(Of course, I'll probably think completely differently tomorrow. Probably because I'll be high off toxic bleach fumes from trying to kill the mold in the bathroom. YAY, New York!!!! You're SO Sex and the City!!!)

And that's today's bitching hour. For more bitching hour, just talk to me any day of the week.

Beep
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*Duh, the picture is a rough approximation. No, there's NOT a button in Photoshop that magically changes your haircolor to exactly what you pictured in your mind. Life is not that Barbie video game, Sherella.